The Pacific Ocean’s garbage-hoarding problem is getting worse

You think this is a lot of garbage? You should see the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. (Getty Images)

Time for a new episode of “Hoarders.” This time, we’re visiting Mother Earth, who has been stashing more and more garbage in the Pacific Ocean.

The BBC reports the hard-to-detect fragments of plastic floating in the northeast Pacific Ocean have grown 100- fold over the last 40 years — a growing concern for marine biologists and environmentalists. A survey conducted by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography concluded that the garbage, deposited in patches by ocean currents, are a breeding ground for the marine insect Halobates sericeus.

Not to mention, that garbage is turning into fish food.

From the BBC:

This Scripps study follows another report by colleagues at the institution that showed 9% of the fish collected during the same Seaplex voyage had plastic waste in their stomachs.

That investigation, published in Marine Ecology Progress Series, estimated the fish at intermediate ocean depths in the North Pacific Ocean could be ingesting plastic at a rate of roughly 12,000 to 24,000 tonnes per year.